The Trials of the B Team

What to do when your baseball-loving sons are cut from a hypercompetitive league? Form a team of your own

By

Lisa Bannon

July 6, 2012 1:47 p.m. ET

ENLARGE

These days travel and club baseball teams start grooming their best players at the ages of 7 and 8. By the time they are 9, many are already on elite teams.
Associated Press

Last November, my twin 9-year-old sons didn't make the cut for the travel baseball team in our hometown of Glen Ridge, N.J. The team takes only 12 players from the entire fourth grade, and Nick and John weren't among them.

To fully grasp the significance of this event, you'd have to see their bedroom, a shrine to Major League Baseball, with a portrait of Yankees center fielder Curtis Granderson hanging in the middle of the room. Nearby is a giant framed photo of Yankee Stadium on the day that Derek Jeter reached 3,000 hits. Our boys happened to be in the stands that day, and John declared it "the best day of my whole life."

To have your dreams dashed is devastating for anyone, at any age. But to be told when you are in fourth grade that you are basically finished with serious baseball? That's a lot for a 9-year-old to take. We knew that we had to do something about it.

In today's hypercompetitive world of youth sports, travel and club baseball teams start identifying and grooming their best players at the ages of 7 and 8. By the time they are 9, many are already on elite teams, often with private coaches, practicing every day and training year round. The goal of these teams, the coaches say, is to provide concentrated training with a focus on winning, so they can take only the very best players.

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Two years ago, my husband and I, oblivious to the arms race in youth sports, thought it was ridiculous to schedule our lives around out-of-town baseball games and triweekly practices. So we waited until third grade to allow Nick and John to try out for the travel team.

But the joke was on us. The travel team for their age group had already chosen and trained the best 12 players in town and didn't take any new players that year. Basically, if you weren't picked for the team when you were 7, you were out.

The dozen boys who were cut took it hard, but the parents took it harder. We all agreed that it was good for them to understand the demands of high-level competition, but did they really need to absorb this cutthroat culture so young?

When my husband played Little League in the 1970s, every kid, no matter how inept or uncoordinated, got a chance to play and to dream of becoming the next Willie Mays. The object wasn't winning but learning the game and developing skills. It wasn't until eighth or ninth grade that coaches started cutting players and focusing on winning.

Those decisions are now made in the second and third grade. Today's athletic tracking squeezes out not only average players but those who might excel later, after they hit adolescence. Is it right to deny this American rite of passage to so many kids?

I didn't want our sons to get swept up in the competitive maelstrom, but I couldn't bear to stand by passively while their baseball dreams were crushed. So a group of parents petitioned the local athletic association to start a new B travel team for our age group.

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Our local baseball commissioner warned that if the boys weren't competitive, it could damage their self-esteem. He suggested that they play in the town rec league, which is meant to be fun. But the parents didn't think that rec was going to train their kids to be serious ballplayers. If they didn't get the same training as the travel team now, they would never catch up.

So last December, we formed a B travel team, composed entirely of the kids who were cut in the tryouts. The new team played in a league separate from the A team's but just as competitive. Our mission wasn't to win but to provide enough training to give the boys a rewarding experience and a chance of competing in high school.

It was the antithesis of an elite baseball team. And it was ugly.

On March 31, our first game of the season, we lost 27-0.

"A total disaster," my husband phoned me from the field. One of our sons pitched and gave up 12 runs in one inning. Our outfielders missed flies, bungled grounders, fumbled line drives. The boys would stand at home plate immobile, afraid to swing at the fast pitches.

A month into the season, the games were routinely ending with scores like 21-1, 25-2, and 16-0. But as April turned to May, the boys' diligent practicing started to pay off.

One Sunday, after two particularly bruising innings, the score was 18-0, and spirits were even lower than usual. Then an opposing slugger smacked a pop fly into the outfield, and our right fielder, who hadn't caught one ball all season, lunged and grabbed it, stunning everyone, especially himself.

In the bottom of the third, our offense came alive, like a popcorn popper that had finally heated up. Nearly every player who came to bat got a hit.

We still lost in spectacular fashion (22-6), but the psychology of the team changed that day: The boys had scored six runs against one of the toughest teams in the league.

There were other small victories. A boy who had been struck in the eye by a pop fly early in the season overcame his fear of the ball and became a catcher. Several of the pitchers learned to throw strikes consistently. New friendships were formed.

Still, it wasn't a pretty season. We didn't win a single game and came in dead last in the league.

But the boys learned some big lessons: that if you practice something every single day, you will get better; that gloating is ugly; that a triumph for one boy is a triumph for the whole team; and that defeat can strengthen resolve and make you bolder.

The sweetest victory came once the season was over. Four of our players, including our Nick and John, learned that they would get to play with the A team this summer. For all my reluctance to embrace travel baseball, no one was more thrilled than I. Because let's be honest, nobody wants to lose forever.

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